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Post by rtraincollector on Dec 21, 2020 0:09:45 GMT
How many people would go to a car dealership and order a car that you can't get for months and then not 100% sure you will get it how it is shown to you. How many have order trains and completely dissatisfied with it when it finally comes in. Either in workmanship or not how it looked in the catalog you where show.
Not to change the subject, but that's how your new car was made. You checked out the models a dealer had, usually low end, low cost models. You then picked colors for both exterior and interior. Engine, transmission, and any extras to add to the vehicle, white sidewalls, back-up lights, console, AM/FM radio, and yes even seat belts were an option one time. You put down a deposit and Dealer would then tell you up to 6 weeks for your new car to arrive, but you had it in usually 4 to 5 weeks. As to BTO, I would never consider since with all the quality control problems, and not 6 weeks wait, rather sometimes years, or maybe even not enough orders, cancelled. A new car nowadays is more exciting then waiting for a re-hashed engine or one size fits all rolling stock. But there maybe hope for "O" scale, like many of us that started or were in other scales, as we grew older, "O" scale filled the niche of handling, and working on a larger model then the small engines and rolling stock as our eyesight became weaker. I have hope and believe "O" will be around a long time.
When I've gone to buy a car, I've always seen from basic models to fully loaded and everything in between. I've never ended up ordering a car.
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Post by Yellowstone Special on Dec 21, 2020 2:10:01 GMT
Thank you, Neil! So I think it would be safe to say that O scale is slowly shrinking. Every time I've tried to suggest this in other threads, very few admit it. I'm afraid that with Mike Wolf's departure, MTH will slowly fade away. Flee, the sky is falling, the end of O gauge in sight, everyone switch to HO Uh no, the sky is not falling and the end of O gauge is not in sight, yet. Just slowly shrinking.
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Post by Traindiesel! on Dec 21, 2020 23:16:18 GMT
Oh George, you Penguin fans. How’d they get into the NHL anyway?! Ah, about the same time as the Flyers, as I recall. That was 1967, about 53 years ago. Hmm, 1968 was the last time the Flyers won the Stanley Cup - their second and last time. The Penguins, flightless birds that they are, have won the coveted trophy 5 times. The most recent victory being 2017 (part of their second back-to-back sequence).
I'm just sayin'...
A Merry Christmas to you Brian! May Santa bring you a hockey team worth cheering for.
George
Flyers won the Stanley Cup in '74 and '75, then choked in six more. With all those high draft picks after being so bad for years, no wonder the Pens did well! But don't worry, Flyers management has been promising another Cup soon.... since 1980.
Merry Christmas to you and your family, George! The hockey team is going in the right direction, I hope Santa brings me a real football team! And I hope he brings you a brand new shiny DCS package!
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Post by Traindiesel! on Dec 22, 2020 0:02:38 GMT
....Brian I am not going to get into how well DCS works as I don’t know. For us it does okay but has been a pain to work with, certainly not like Legacy’s hook up a wire and run and yes, you do have to provide drops to the track as you go. We used Barry’s book and wired accordingly. It required a lot of wiring and we ran separate wires to each block. Steve Nelson told us that we could go 2-3 times further between blocks than Barry specified which helped a great deal. We ran only one wire and dropped no feeder wires. Did you simply run a bus and drop feeder wires to the track as you went (which is how I envision Legacy working) and isn’t it far easier than the MTH solution? We never meddled with lightbulbs. Thanks for your help. I apologize for possibly messing up the thread. Bill Bill, I had then, as I do now, an around the room perimeter layout. I initially followed Barry's recommendations for wiring DCS, but with a 150' loop (one of eight I started with) I needed 16 pairs of feeder wires from the track. Using the 'star' wiring method I ended up with a rats nest of wires at the terminal block, with seven more to do. Running so much wire around the room for one loop didn't make sense to me. After speaking to Marty Fitzhenry, he said that a pair of bus wires for each loop would work with DCS, with track feeder wires every tenth track joint, along with insulated center rail between the feeders.
So ok, I figured I'd try running a bus wire around the perimeter of the layout to test it out. I attached the bus close to the edge of the layout and fished out the feeders with a wire coat hanger so I didn't have to crawl around underneath. Already the wiring was a lot neater and organized. A mistake I made was connecting the ends of the bus wire together. Even with light bulbs attached at various points my signal strength was terrible. But there was no way I was going to do 'star' wiring again. I'll shorten this post by avoiding the troubleshooting, but it ended up being so simple it was stupid!
What made it all work was disconnecting the wires from the terminal block altogether, then disconnecting the ends of the bus wire and removing the bulbs. I started the bus wire at the TIU output for the first loop and kept the ends of the bus disconnected from itself. Once I attached the feeder wires and fired up the TIU and Z4000 I had perfect signal all around the layout and had no signal or connection problems and no light bulbs until I dismantled the layout when we moved. Around 2006 until 2017 with a 2004 vintage TIU.
So the procedure was: *12 gauge wire for the bus wires connected to and starting at the TIU output around the layout perimeter (but do not connect the ends). *16 gauge wire for the track feeders every 10th track joint (I has previously insulated the center rail between each feeder wires, which worked, but in a later conversation with Marty he said it wasn't necessary to insulate. I will try this when I wire my current layout) *No light bulbs used *Connected the Legacy Command Base to the common TIU outputs via a small terminal block
This is just how I did it and it worked great with DCS and Legacy locomotives. On my current smaller layout (for now) I will be adding the DCS WiFi and Legacy WiFi later on. Awww, man, now I can't wait to get running!!
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Post by mrmeep on Dec 22, 2020 1:12:59 GMT
Did anyone by the MTH showroom layout? I know he had one at his building.
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Post by MichRR714 on Dec 22, 2020 15:08:33 GMT
Brian, I am wired for DCS very similarly as you.(Buss wiring) I don't even have insulators between my drops and I have 8-10s everywhere on the layout. Barry scared off many people from DCS pushing star wiring with it's resulting cost and rats nest of wires. Star wiring might be better for DCS but it isn't the only way to go.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2020 18:23:58 GMT
Brian, thanks so much. Sure is easier than what we did with all the wires. Steve Nelson helped us out by telling us that we could make longer runs which we did but it was still a total pain.
Plan to make a change on level 2.
I wonder if the star wiring/lightbulb was needed at first but as the DCS system improved it didn’t become obsolete. Nobody would speak up and rock the boat.
Merry Christmas
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Post by ptc on Dec 22, 2020 20:10:56 GMT
Charlie hit the nail on the head. I bet a lot of folks wish they had the benefit of what he sad before jumping in with the star wiring pattern.
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gftiv
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Post by gftiv on Dec 22, 2020 21:17:58 GMT
I have 3.** TIU's and no special wiring on the layout. I needed the magic light bulb trick to make it work. no problems after that.
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Post by Country Joe on Dec 22, 2020 21:50:47 GMT
I don't have and didn't read Barry's book and have no idea what the magic light bulb is all about. I wired my layout just as I would a conventional layout, the same way I've wired layouts since I was a kid, and the DCS works just fine.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 23, 2020 0:59:26 GMT
Like Traindiesel Brian, I asked Marty Fitzhenry about wiring since I added DCS to an existing (though not yet complete) layout. Track had already been wired using buss wires and feeds for each mainline (12-gauge wire all the way); this gave consistent power all the way around for conventional operation, and Marty's advice was to hook up the TIU, give it a try and see how it works before changing anything. I had to change the length of a few blocks, but other than that, track signal is mostly 10 but a few spots where it drops to 8, but still reliable operation.
I know this is wishful thinking, but whatever happens with MTH, I sure hope they reconsider the decision to discontinue the remote control. I picked up a few spare remotes and TIUs over the last 2 years so I should be ok for a long time to come. When you live as far away from a dealer as we do, keeping spares on hand ensures that the trains will keep rolling in the event of having to send a component out for repair--that's assuming, of course, the parts and labor are available for the repair.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 23, 2020 7:48:31 GMT
I use buss lines on my layout and never have had a problem
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Post by bluelinec4 on Dec 23, 2020 23:19:31 GMT
The star wiring pattern doesnt hurt What it does do on a large layout is make it easier to diagnose problems There are 9 TIU's on our layout Many places you cant see Its very easy to go to a terminal board and isolate one block that is causing a short using process of elimination
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2020 0:22:36 GMT
REV L TIU work just fine with bus wired layouts. Problem with DCS is it’s 20 years old now and it’s getting stale. Sounds suck compared to Legacy, the DCS app I’ve had issues and don’t use it anymore. I only have three MTH engines, while I do plan on keeping them, I’m going to slowly convert them to Legacy. The plus with MTH engines, is they have more detail than Lionel and quality is second to none. I really don’t see how a Second entity can run a parts and DCS support only operation. If the tooling gets destroyed how you going to make parts?
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